Words matter

Brian Wilson

I was reminded of that on Monday afternoon when a reader stopped into The Star News with concerns about the word choice in last week’s front page story regarding the outcome of the April 5 election.

For many people in the Medford School District, the headline contest was over the school’s $29.9 million referendum. The focus of the planned upgrades were expand and update technical education, science and other classroom spaces at the high school while seeking to make improvements in the school office and cafeteria and address traffic flow and student safety by building an access road from Medford Area Elementary School to CTH Q.

For anyone who may have missed it, the referendum lost horribly. About 65% of the voters in the election opposed the spending plan compared to about 35% in favor. The people spoke and their message was a clear ‘No.’ The “no” vote does not make the district’s building needs disappear, it simply says the voters did not agree with the school board’s plan on how to address those needs. Given the highly focused rancor, for at least some, opposition was closely tied to specific staff members.

The reader who stopped in to visit on Monday objected to a line in the story describing the “Vote no” campaign as being “well organized.” He expressed concern that was overly negative when it was the “voice of the people” to oppose the plan. He said, if anything it was the “Vote yes” folks who were well-organized, citing specifically the school district’s informational ads that were run in the weeks before the election. State law limits what school district can do in promoting referendums to being information providers.

There was no community-led “Vote yes” committee to take the next step and encourage residents to actually vote for the referendum. Individual efforts that took place were haphazard and purely reactive to what the “Vote no” folks did. This would be roughly equivalent to benching the starters on your basketball team and then having everyone afraid to go past half court.

The difference is if you see being “well organized” as being a positive, negative, or simply stating a fact. My intention in writing the sentence was that it was simply stating a fact. I can understand that others may see it differently.

As elections go, this was far from my first trip to the rodeo. From the outset, it was clear there was an effort in place to oppose any referendum. Lighted road-construction style signs don’t just spontaneously appear. Nor does the consistent message in Vox Pops, social media posts and responses or comments at listening sessions.

To me this is not a negative. This was individuals using the tools at their disposal to express their political view and encourage others in the community to share that viewpoint. Community members in support of the referendum had access to those same sorts of opportunities, but had no real organization.

Where I have some personal issues is with election laws that don’t require the actual name of a human being on paid political speech. As someone whose name is put on every news article or opinion piece he writes, I find hiding behind anonymity in politics to be inherently suspect. People skulking about in shadows is never good for democracy.

Getting any sort of referendum passed in the future will take community members stepping up and being organized well before any consideration is taken at the school board level. To that end, any future capital improvement referendum should be community driven rather than school board and administration driven. Only then, will they have a chance at success.

But I digress. Strategy for how a future referendum might have a chance to pass is discussion for another time. Words matter.

My son’s English class has spent the past several weeks studying “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare. The play is one of my favorites, if for no other reason than the soaring oratory of the words. “He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus,” as Cassius says to Brutus. Or famously Marc Antony’s knife-twisting description of the conspirators as being “all honorable men.”

Words matter when it comes to describing the actions of individuals who seek to shape the future of the community. Words matter when it comes to trying to understand how a decision was made. In the absence of the nuance and tone that is present in face to face discussions words matter in print.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.